Chapter Thirty-Two - Don't Be Where They Think You Are

Go fast.

Burst through the door, spew some hot lead at the first thing that moves, run.

The tactical genius of the street thug that had nothing to lose. The strategy of the assassin with no cover. The number one trick of the urban combatant.

Don't be where the enemy thinks you are.

Instead, be right up in their grill. So close to their face with iron against their neck that you can taste what they had for lunch before the trigger's pulled and brain matter goes ballistic.

Explosives were good for this kind of fighting. A big boom, a bright flash. It left people confused. Scared the rest. Explosions tapped into a primal fear. Cromagnon seeing god's wrath coming down from the heavens in all of its electric glory. The memory was seared into the monkey brain.

If explosives weren't available, then guns. Loud ones. Fast ones. Keep moving. Stopping is death. Confusion and chaos is life.

There was value in speed and ferocity.

Once, when Ivil was a much weaker woman, when her skills in the art of turning people's insides into outsides were not yet as honed, and when she barely had an armful of cores to her name, she'd discovered this truth.

Any enemy that could defeat you in open battle was not necessarily an enemy that you could not defeat.

Being quick to strike and striking when others would hesitate could turn the tables in an uneven fight. Entering a fight with every advantage you had pushed to the max would set the enemy on the backfoot. An enemy on the backfoot was a dead enemy.

Dead enemies were more cores, more fear, more chaos.

As time went on, she kind of lost that savage edge.

There's a certain point in the scaling of power where someone can step back and rely on more traditional, calculated ways of gaining a violent victory.

Today, Ivil was exploring her old way of doing things.

"Two left!" Missy shouted.

Ivil knew already, but she nodded and gestured to her left. Two women were ripped out from behind an intersection and sent slamming into the wall opposite. There were more women there too, hiding behind some cargo bolted to the floor of the passageway. One of them screamed. It wasn't a warrior's scream.

Ivil put an end to it a moment later with a cracked neck that only she heard. She was acutely aware of how all of this fighting was disturbing her companions. Twenty-Six was shaking a little. Aurora was keeping a brave face, but she wasn't pleased.

Missy, at least, was having a blast.

The ex-warmime launched herself across the room, then twisted at the waist like a cat so that she hit the ceiling feet-first. She levelled her gun and fired, her new angle giving her a clear shot around some cover the pirates were using deeper in the corridor.

"Got them," Missy said. She scanned the passage, then pushed herself down. "Looks clear too."

"I can't sense anything," Ivil said as she walked in. "They weren't as prepared for us this time."

Missy gave a sharp nod. The two of them had been... getting along. Missy acted as a very capable spotter and scout. As soon as she understood Ivil's intentions she'd slipped into a role that seemed very easy for her. Ivil suspected that this was exactly the kind of thing that Missy had once trained to do.

Instead of heading straight for the central hub of the station, they passed underneath it. Twenty-Six had discovered a small maintenance passage, then disabled the cameras there with a bit of... percussive persuasion.

From there, they ended up on almost the opposite side of the station.

It didn't take long for the pirates to react, but when they did, it was to defend the wrong direction. Ivil and her companions doubled back, came out of another maintenance passage, and were now pushing straight to the main command level of the central station.

"That's the bulkhead into the command level," Missy said as she pointed to the door. She casually slid a shell into the underside of her shotgun. "There's going to be resistance there. Automated defences. Guards. It's the kind of space that you don't want to leave undefended, even in good times."

"We don't need to linger," Ivil said. "Or even hold the room. Just clear it, then go. We can poke a hole in a wall before leaving, let the space vent itself out."

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"That would be... catastrophic," Twenty-Six said. "The room's huge. That's a lot of air. Probably like, a full two or three percent of the station's volume.

"Is that... bad?" Aurora asked.

Twenty-Six looked at the older woman, then shrugged. "It's not good. You're kinda showing your, uh... sorry."

"My upbringing?" Aurora asked.

"A little," Twenty-Six admitted. "If you live in space, on a station or on a ship, you remember the five causes. The five things that'll probably kill you. There's an order to them. Air, water, food, space and radiation."

Ivil noticed a lack of 'catastrophic explosions' on that list.

"I'm familiar with all five," Aurora said.

Twenty-Six nodded. "Right. Air's the big one. On a ship it's less about having enough air as it is about the quality and making sure it stays in the ship. VOCs are a problem, so is stale air. But mostly it's not so bad. A ship like the Held Together only needs a few big tanks to hold more than enough air to refill its interior volume a few times. A station's different."

"The air is circulated and controlled a lot more," Aurora said.

"And it has more volume to be in. Which is a problem. You don't usually notice on small ships, because compartments leak into each other, but pressurisation is a huge danger. If there's a sudden loss of a lot of air, and it's not accounted for and controlled, it'll lead to a lot of trouble elsewhere." Twenty-Six took a deep breath, then let it out. "I'm not saying poking a few holes in the command room will doom the station or anything. It'll just make a few engineers and mechanics earn their keep in a big way."

Ivil smiled. It was always nice seeing Twenty-Six get absurdly passionate about something. She even stopped trembling and being mildly afraid of the corpses they were moving past. "We'll poke the holes once we're out, then," Ivil said.

Twenty-Six blinked, then nodded. "Right. For a moment I kind of forgot, but we are trying to fight these people off."

"Can you see about opening that door?" Ivil pointed to the entrance into the command centre.

If she'd read the map correctly, this door would lead into the lower floor of the command centre. It was a two-tiered space, with the larger lower floor containing lower priority systems, and the upper balcony housing all of the more important consoles for running the station.

It was likely a design copied from old terrestrial ship bridges and traffic control towers, giving those within an unobstructed view of the various arms of the station and the docking spaces within.

Visual confirmation was far from necessary, but it was, on occasion, helpful. An IFF could be spoofed, and damage might go unregistered, so traffic control stations still had windows unto the outside.

"What's the plan, before we get gunned down breaking in there?" Missy asked.

"Twenty-Six opens the door, and I let loose for... about a hundredth of a second," Ivil said. "Then we mop up the rest. After that, we find a ship we like, set it up so that the station will let it go, and we head out to grab our new transportation."

"You make it sound easy," Missy said.

"Oh, forgive me. It'll be far from easy or simple. But I will strive to make it look as though it takes only minimal effort on my part."

Missy chuckled darkly, then she moved to the side of the door. Twenty-Six and Aurora moved to the other side, both squeezing themselves tight against the wall so that they wouldn't be seen and caught in the crossfire.

Twenty-Six nodded to Ivil, then tapped a button.

The door opened.

Ivil sped up her personal perception, pushing herself to the limit for a fraction of a second as she took in the command room with her eyes and her many extended senses. There were, at a quick count, thirty-two men and women on the deck. Only the women were armed, and they were all either pointing guns her way, or turning to do so.

Three turrets. Two mounted on the ceiling, another near the front of the room. Only one was locked on already, the others were still scanning the room.

She noted people frozen in the act of shouting orders, several screens lit up in red. Alerts were paused mid-flash on several screens, and the room had the thick, cloying scent of a place filled with too many stressed people.

Ivil smiled. This would be easy, then.

***